Real Food Cooking

Archive for the category “Just Pics”

So… It’s been a long while and I feel like I need to apologize. I disappeared with no warning or explanation. I disappeared for a good reason though. See below 😀

The lease at our apartment ended in January and we moved in with my grandma. I cooked plenty while I was there, but I wasn’t very creative. But, I’m back in my own house and this year, I might even be able to garden along with my cooking. I’m going to give it a go. We’ll see how green my thumb is.

On to the experiments.

I’ve been making my own cleaner with vinegar and water for a while. It super cheap and really does a good job of cleaning, but it smells like vinegar (of course). The smell dissipates pretty quickly, but it’s extremely noticeable while actually cleaning. I looked around the internet for some suggestions. I found one and I’m hoping it works. You soak orange peels in vinegar for a few weeks and use that instead of the regular vinegar. I’m a little skeptical about the vinegar getting sticky from the oranges, but we’ll see.

The second one is vanilla extract. I love using it, but I hate buying it. It’s like $10 out of the weekly grocery budget and even though I know a little bottle takes a long time to use up, I still hate when I have to get more. Instead, I found this recipe using vodka and decided to give it a shot (get it?). I’m pretty sure it will work because it already looks darker and smells like vanilla and it’s only been a couple weeks. Unfortunately, I won’t know for sure for another month and a half. I’m really glad she mentions most store bought extracts have simple syrup in them, so when I can use this batch, I’ll need to figure that into my recipe. Theoretically, you can just keep adding more vodka as you use it. That is the part I really like – having a never ending supply of vanilla extract. I’m sure at some point the beans will loose their kick, but hopefully it will be years from now.